Editing Shopify metafields in bulk without touching the API

Metafields hold the things Shopify's standard fields don't: materials, care instructions, sizing charts, spec sheets, whatever your theme reads. They're also where a catalog quietly becomes inconsistent, because each one is edited by hand, one product at a time.

They export like any other column

Export Products with metafields included and each definition becomes its own column, with the value in the cell. From there it's a spreadsheet problem: sort by the column to find the blanks, use find-and-replace to standardise "100% cotton" against "Cotton 100%", fill a whole category in one drag.

Types still matter

A metafield has a type, and the value has to match it. Numbers must be numbers, dates must be dates, and a list type expects the format Shopify defines. If a value doesn't fit, the import reports that row rather than writing something broken — check the results file.

Metaobjects too

Metaobjects — reusable structured records that products point at — export and import the same way. Editing a size chart once and having it apply everywhere beats editing it on eighty products.

Export a couple of products first to see the exact column names for your definitions. Those names are what the import matches on.